Readers’ Choice survey looks at your level of satisfactionwith several aspects of the service including speed. Satisfaction is based on survey respondents’ perceptions rather than raw data and can be influenced by other factors including cost. For instance, a respondent may be very pleased with his connection speed, not because it’s so fast but because it feels appropriately fast for the price paid. On the other hand, there are respondents for whom speed is speed, and they won’t be satisfied unless their connection is blazingly fast, no matter the cost.

Respondents expressed dissatisfaction like never before with ISPs at the bottom of the pack. While our award winners’ ratings moved little from 2015, this year, the three lowest rated ISPs—Verizon DSL, Windstream DSL, and Frontier DSL—all had overall satisfaction ratings below 5.0, a threshold no provider fell below last year.Frontier’s rating of 3.8 can only be described as atrocious.